On the Outside Looking In? Faculty Perceptions of Disciplinary Culture and Their Sense of Belonging
Hiller, S. C., Braught, E., Nelson Laird, T.
American Educational Research Association, 2025, April.
Faculty sense of belonging necessarily incorporates not only how much faculty feel they belong in their institutional community but also, even implicitly, how they feel they belong within their disciplinary community. While disciplinary differences in faculty work is studied frequently, little is known about whether and faculty perceptions of their disciplinary cultures relate to feelings of belonging. This study contributes to the literature on disciplinary cultures and sense of belonging by investigating faculty perceptions of their disciplinary cultures and faculty membersâ?? alignment with the perceptions of their disciplinary peers. Results suggest some limited connection between perceptions of disciplinary cultures and an institutionally-focused sense of belonging.
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Varying Perceptions of Disciplinary Cultures: The Roles of Faculty Identities and Professional Experiences
Braught, E., Hiller, S. C., Nelson Laird, T.
American Educational Research Association, 2025, April.
Studies about disciplinary differences often assume that aspects of disciplinary cultures are experienced or perceived consistently across group members despite the socially constructed nature of disciplinary cultures. Becherâ??s (1989) and Biglanâ??s (1973a,b) seminal works on academic disciplines proposed the dimensions meant to capture dynamics that distinguished disciplinary cultures. With nearly 700 responses from faculty in 98 disciplines, this study explores faculty perceptions of cultural aspects of their discipline and how faculty membersâ?? social identities and professional experiences relate to how they perceive their disciplinary cultures and how their perceptions relate to their peers.
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Am I a professional? A quantitative study of faculty professional identity
Chamis, Ella; Braught, Emily; BrckaLorenz, Allison
Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 2024, November.
The field often takes the professional identities of its faculty for granted, and faculty professional identity development is largely understudied. In this person-centered quantitative study, we explore the importance of faculty professional identity and consider its influencing factors for development. Our findings provide clarity and guidance in developing faculty professional identity.
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Examining the relationship between faculty identity and their civically engaged teaching practices
Jin, Seonmi; Zhang, Xiaoxia; BrckaLorenz, Allison
Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 2024, November.
This study explores the relationship between facultyâ??s identity and their civically engaged teaching practices, applying the Diversity Learning Environment model (Hurtado et al., 2012). We used the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), which included 13,531 faculty responses from 65 participating institutions, and conducted a multi-level modeling analysis.
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Exploring how inclusive name/pronoun policies and practices relate to quality of interactions
Feldman, Steven; Copeland, Olivia; BrckaLorenz, Allison
Association for the Study of Higher Education Annual Conference, Minneapolis, MN, 2024, November.
Using a large-scale, multi-institution dataset, we explore the relationship between name/pronoun policies and practices and college studentsâ?? quality of interactions with other students, advisors, faculty, staff, and administrators on campus. Findings indicate that more affirming policies and practices were associated with more positive quality of interactions, especially for transgender students.
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Complex Identities: Writing and Using Identity Demographic Questions
BrckaLorenz, Allison
Association for Institutional Research Forum, Denver, CO, 2024, May.
Examining educational quality and student or staff experiences within an institution means we must look at subgroups in the data we collect. Some defining characteristics of the respondent experience can be relatively easy to capture in a survey question, but others, particularly questions about identity, can be a challenge. Often the goals of good survey practice contrast with the variable and complex nature of identity. This session will first focus on how to balance the competing needs of creating clear, concise, and easily answerable questions on aspects of identity that are sensitive, complex, and not easily defined. We will also examine strategies for using and sharing the data and results gathered from complex identity questions. We will look at a variety of examples and scenarios, and participants should prepare to share and discuss their specific population challenges as well as any advice for working with complex identity demographics.
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A Multi-Institutional Examination of Mind and Body Well-being for First-Generation
Yuhas, Bridget; Copeland, Olivia; Feldman, Steven; BrckaLorenz, Allison
American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, 2024, April.
First-generation students (FGs) often face unique challenges in navigating collegiate experiences which can impact their well-being. In this study, we examine undergraduate FGsâ?? mind and body well-being using data from two large-scale multi-institutional data sets. Specifically, we examine relationships between stressors and supports and assess the extent that FGs know how to get help at their institution for a variety of well-being issues. Results imply that FGs generally feel less institutional support for their well-being, that inverse relationships exist for mind and body stressors and institutional supports, and that results for knowing how to get help are mixed. Implications point to continued disaggregation to better understand FGs experiences and recognizing the importance of social capital to FGs success.
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Connecting College Student Civic Engagement and Cultural Center Involvement
Copeland, Olivia; Feldman, Steven; BrckaLorenz, Allison
American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, 2024, April.
In this study, we explore the relationship between cultural center involvement and college studentsâ?? civic engagement outcomes. We utilize data from a large-scale, multi-institutional data set to run a series of regression analyses. Findings indicate that participating in the activities of a cultural center positively correlates with higher levels of civic engagement skills and abilities as well as frequency of civic engagement. We also used effect coding in our models to explore sub-group differences within gender, sexual, and racial identity categories. Disaggregating by identity, our results indicate some disparities among students prior to considering their cultural center involvement. These findings present a significant counter to the widespread attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, evidencing the continued relevance and positive influence of cultural centers on all students.
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Faculty Perceptions of Disciplinary Cultures and Their Relationship to Teaching: Validating Becher's Convergent-Divergent Dimension
Hiller, Stephen C.; Braught, Emily; Nelson Laird, Thomas
American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, 2024, April.
Becherâ??s (1989) seminal work on academic disciplines proposed the Convergent-Divergent dimension to capture one social dynamic that distinguished disciplinary cultures, and yet little work has explored how the Convergent-Divergent dimension relates to faculty teaching practices. This study operationalizes this dimension in items appended to the Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE). With nearly 700 responses from faculty in 98 disciplines, this study examines the relationship of a Cultural Convergence construct with faculty teaching practices and whether faculty taught similarly to their disciplinary peers. Findings indicate that cultural convergence does not influence teaching practices in four of five areas, though the more convergent a discipline, the more faculty tend to teach similarly to their peers in three of five areas of teaching.
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Faculty Perceptions of Their Disciplinary Cultures: Re-Evaluating Biglanâ??s Dimensions
Braught, Emily; Hiller, Stephen C.; Nelson Laird, Thomas
American Educational Research Association Annual Meeting, Philadelphia, PA, 2024, April.
Disciplinary cultures are an important part of understanding the faculty experience. For fifty years, the Biglan dimensions have been frequently relied on by researchers interested in considering disciplinary differences as parts of their studies; however, applying a cultural lens draws attention to the possibility that over time, disciplinary cultures may have changed. Through exploring faculty perceptions of their disciplines using an item set derived from key cultural aspects of Biglanâ??s dimensions, compared to the Biglan dimensions, this exploratory study offers insights into the evolution of disciplinary cultures, highlighting the variation and fluidity of disciplinary cultures that faculty experience in their disciplines today.
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Options for Assessing the Faculty Practice in HIPs
BrckaLorenz, Allison
Community-Engaged Alliance Summit & Research Symposium, Bloomington, IN, 2024, April.
This session discusses options for assessing faculty involvement in engaging students in high-impact practices (HIPs). We will talk about assessing faculty use of effective, educational, high-impact practices as well as ways to create environments that support and motivate faculty to do their best work engaging students in HIPs.
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Supporting and retaining faculty with diverse community, workload satisfaction, and feeling valued
BrckaLorenz, A., Chamis, E., Priddie, C.
AACU Diversity, Equity, and Student Success, Philadelphia, PA, 2024, March.
Higher education continues to struggle in efforts to hire, support, and retain diverse faculty. Using a conceptual framework that focuses on how environments contribute to facultyâ??s ability to thrive and do their best work as educators, we will explore how faculty structural diversity (a proxy for a diverse and inclusive community), satisfaction with work-life and within-work balance, and perceptions of being valued by their institution relate to their intentions to stay at their institution, the professoriate, or academia altogether. Join this session to discuss how these aspects of environment relate to faculty retention and to contribute to a growing collection of ideas about how to create community, workload satisfaction, and perceptions of institutional value for diverse faculty. Participants will leave this session with thoughts on how these issues manifest on their campus and ideas for how to assess and improve their own efforts to support and retain diverse faculty.
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Connecting College Student Civic Engagement and Cultural Center Involvement
Copeland, Oliva M., Feldman, Steven, BrckaLorenz, Allison
ACPA Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, 2024, March.
In this study, we explore the relationship between cultural center involvement and college studentsâ?? civic engagement outcomes. We utilize data from a large-scale, multi-institutional data set to run a series of regression analyses. Findings indicate that participating in the activities of a cultural center positively correlates with higher levels of civic engagement skills and abilities as well as frequency of civic engagement. We also used effect coding in our models to explore sub-group differences within gender, sexual, and racial identity categories. Disaggregating by identity, our results indicate some disparities among students prior to considering their cultural center involvement. These findings present a significant counter to the widespread attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts, evidencing the continued relevance and positive influence of cultural centers on all students.
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Investigating the Campus Pride Indexâ??s Relationship to Perceived Student Support
Copeland, Olivia M., Feldman, Steven, BrckaLorenz, Allison
ACPA Annual Convention, Chicago, IL, 2024, March.
The Campus Pride Index (CPI) is often used as a litmus test for assessing the level of LGBTQ+ inclusion and support within higher education institutions. However, little research has explicitly examined the relationship between CPI rating and LGBTQ+ studentsâ?? perceptions of supportiveness. To explore this, we analyzed 118,244 student responses about their institutionâ??s support for diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. Results indicate that at top-rated CPI institutions, LGBQ+ students had lower perceptions of support than their peers. We discuss the implications of these results, focusing on how institutions may uncritically utilize CPI as the ceiling for LGBTQ+ support rather than a minimum, with ideas for how student affairs practitioners can utilize CPI while also going beyond CPIâ??s metrics.
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Beyond The Classroom: Student Perceptions of Faculty Support for Mental Health and Well-Being
Russell, Alethia; Chamis, Ella; Kinzie, Jillian
NASPA Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, 2024, March.
The 2023 National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) included a new MHWB topical module that invited undergraduates to respond to an open-ended prompt to describe one way their institution supported their MHWB. We used thematic analysis to examine more than 13,000 responses to this open-ended prompt. Findings revealed that students perceived faculty serve in three distinct roles that supplement and, in some cases, supplant institution support for MHWB. Our paper session further details those findings.
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Promoting Campuswide Use of NSSE Data: Fostering Student Engagement, Social Identity, and a Sense of Belonging
Kinzie, J., Russell, A., & Wenger, K.
NASPA Annual Conference, Seattle, WA, 2024, March.
Studentsâ?? sense of belonging and social identities matter to engagement. In 2023, the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) revised items with a critical eye toward inclusion by expanding social identity questions so students see themselves in response options and to make the survey more relevant for todayâ??s students. This interactive session features an overview and discussion of recent NSSE results for social identities and belonging and introduces two resources for inclusive and campuswide data sharing and use in student affairs.
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Assessing College Student Mental Health and Well-Being: Implications for Campus Support and Promising Practice
Kinzie, Jillian; BrckaLorenz, Allison; Chambers, Tony; Huber, Susan; Yuhas, Bridget
AACU Annual Meeting, Washington, DC, 2024, January.
Concern about college studentsâ?? mental health and the need for institutions to provide more support are on the rise. This session will draw from three research projectsâ??Student Well-Being Institutional Support Survey (SWISS), National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) Mental Health & Well-Being module, and the Center for Healthy Minds and Human Flourishing courseâ??to combine assessments and expand understanding of student mental health, perceptions of support, and effective interventions. We will highlight the most current and important findings about college student mental health and well-being, discuss implications for colleges and universities and considerations for equity, and exchange ideas about campus interventions that show the most promise.
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A Quantitative Review of Faculty Practices and Perceptions of the Scholarship for Teaching and Learning
Braught, Emily; BrckaLorenz, Allison
Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Summit, 2024.
How do faculty perceive and interact with scholarship for teaching and learning? This session will review findings from the 2022 and 2023 Faculty Survey of Student Engagement (FSSE), exploring the extent to which classroom- and institutional-level assessment efforts are used to make improvements and hone teaching practices, the extent to which faculty collaborate and build community with one another to share out teaching practices, and the extent to which external motivations influence faculty frequency of practices related to the scholarship of teaching and learning.
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